Email, text messaging and other forms of electronic communication have continued to grow in popularity as more and more devices are able to connect to the internet. Over the years, network connectivity has been extended to appliances such as refrigerators, home entertainment centers, and interactive box sets for use with television sets, digital cameras, and cell phones. With the evolution of these devices, there have been developments in home networks. For example, WIFI technology enables users to interconnect various network enabled devices wirelessly to form their own local area network. Various services and applications currently exist with the goal of establishing data connectivity between different network locations. The growth of the Internet and other types of networks has contributed to the numerous networking applications that currently exist.
Electronic messaging and networking capabilities have been extended to a number of portable devices including cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and personal computers. As these devices continue to evolve, electronic messages including email, text messages and instant messages may be transmitted between these web-enabled devices. However, sending a video message or other form of media data between these devices using email or other form electronic messaging is still relatively impractical as many media files may be too large to send using convention forms of electronic messaging. In addition, many devices that have capabilities to interact with networks and receive and send electronic messages, often have poor user-interface features, and limited processing/memory resources for receiving and playing back media files that are transmitted and received.
Additionally, there are various interoperability issues when different types of network enabled devices are coupled and media files are sent between devices. Often, the different devices operate on incompatible platforms or operating systems. This can cause problems in how these devices share data with one another. Furthermore, connected devices may use different data types (.WAV versus MPEG) and/or data formats that hinder the user's ability to share media files amongst devices. As an example, the size of the screen display on a cell phone is typically too small to render images from a digital camera, even if the cell phone is camera-enabled. Often, the result is that when users want to share data amongst connected devices, that user must perform numerous manual steps, such as manually converting data formats.
Even as various computer and electronic devices increase their functionality, their hardware components, environment and form-factor become limitations that need to be accounted for when devices are sought to operate with one another. For example, many devices are capable of rendering or playing back rich media (e.g. music or video), but these devices have different levels of suitability for these functions and most times large media files may not be transmitted to and stored by these devices.